Royal National Park

Wollongong Excursion

Had a fantastic action-packed weekend between Sydney and Wollongong!

First was a trip on Friday night to the Opera House to watch the Sydney Symphony Orchestra (with Liz, Myles & Grace) perform music from The Legend of Zelda series. They did a great job; performing suites from The Ocarina of Time, Windwaker, a few others and the third encore of a whole suite Majora's Mask didn't hurt!

Then Liz and I headed down Wollongong on Saturday for the afternoon wedding of Westy and Kristy (both technically West's now I suppose). Beautiful ceremony, excellent VW convey van as the wedding vehicle, a brief stop off via The Brewery on the way to the reception. This was followed by alot of eating, drinking, dancing and a trip on a suspicious but fun 'party bus' that randomly pulled up and offered us a ride. There were many flashing lights and Toby treated us to some pole dancing. Then a visit to a pretty full on club, then that was it. Brunch followed on Sunday, during which we took over a whole cafe and then Liz and I took a fairly lengthy detour on the way home along the coast road, through the Royal National Park and to Bundeena.

That's it!

Lee Unkrich

A couple of weeks ago I went to one of the best animation talks that I have been lucky enough to attend. As a part of the annual GRAPHIC Festival, Lee Unkrich (Director of Toy Story 3) came to Sydney on behalf of Pixar to give the audience a rough overview of their process in the making of an animated feature film. In what ended up being closer to 2 hours than the original 90 minutes he managed to do just that in brief (yet thorough) detail.

I was blown away by how much he covered and the fantastic approach to how he presented - little-to-no technical jargon, even when going into detail on topics such as their latest technology Wonder Moss (developed to enrich the landscapes of Brave) were explained in such real world terms that I don't think anyone in the audience would have walked away without an understanding of the what the technology offered. We had inside glimpses of rarely seen and unseen material that is usually only seen internally at Pixar. Such as voice actor 'auditions' where they took audio from a film their potential actor featured in and animating to that as an example of whether or not they voice will fit the character. As examples we watched Tom Hank's audition (Turner &Hooch audio) and Billy Crystal's (When Harry Met Sally audio). Although Crystal did turn them down (which he later regretted) he did ultimately voice Mike in Monsters Inc - so it all worked out! These and some hilarious animation reference footage;

Which was their reference for this scene from Toy Story 3 (sorry you've got to scrub through a bit.);

Mr. Tortilla Head from elpidab on Vimeo.

Some in depth explanations of the audio editing process revealed that one single line of dialogue was taken from about 10 takes, a single word ('Andy') in said example was comprised of 4 different takes!

Some other cool bits and pieces included the explanation of their color scripts and the evolution of their story boarding technique when Brad Bird came on board for The Incredibles. We were also lucky enough to meet the man (briefly) as he signed our books which had been hurriedly purchased 10 minutes prior.

Excellent day which was followed up by lunch in the rocks and a trip to check out the Little Black Jacket exhibit down in an old warehouse on the pier in Welsh Bay.

Seventeen*3

44. Explore Gould's Arcade in Newtown.

 No. 44 on my list has been nailed!

It was a while ago, while I was still writing the list but I've finally gotten around to grabbing photos off my phone so here we are. Liz and I took a day trip to Newtown on the cityrail free transit day. Why the hell wouldn't we? We went to King's Comics as well, so we didn't have to pay for a trip that probably would have cost somewhere in the $20 - $25 mark. The shop was nuts! I'd seen brief photos on the web but had always assumed it was downstairs in some sort of basement shop for some reason. Like the best music stores are you know? So I was wrong. It was in some sort of old factory type building with the entire place decked out with shelves. As you walk in you pass by a comedic amount of 2nd hand cd's and dvd's but you barely glance at them because it is plainly obvious that no matter how many there are they are minuscule in comparison to the epic number of books covering the walls, shelves and floor of the shop. There is zero room to move through the isle's as the narrow shelves are even more cluttered with the milk crates and general piles of books threatening to cave in and smother you. If you went in looking for one specific book you would have absolutely no hope and it's pointless asking about it because there is no way on earth that they would have records of what they have. Not a chance. I worry if there is a section to the shop that you can't see, that houses more books. I loved it! Hunting through 2nd hand bookshops is a love of mine and dependent on the the company I could spend hours in Gould's Arcade (before I found anything I'm sure). They have a healthy stock of old comics as well, but most impressive is there large corner of lp's. I didn't peruse them too closely, but I hope one day to sort through them in hope of finding some Sabbath, Stones and Maiden. Eerily enough 'Black Sabbath' - Black Sabbath just came on itunes. Also, bought my Soundwave tix last weekend - cannot wait to see Maiden live AGAIN!

The entrance.

 The main stage.

An average isle.

So there you have it. No. 44. Once I move I dare say I will be exploring Newtown more often.

Thirteen*6

Well here we are. 136 posts later I have reached the 1 Year Anniversary for my blog - who would have thought I'd actually keep going at it this long?

It's difficult to wrap my head around the fact that 1 year ago I was in 4th Year uni, down in Melbourne on work experience when I started this blog. And now I'm in Sydney still looking for a job.

How time flies.

I graduated on the 15th, it was a double whammy with my birthday the same day. It was a good day, the rest of the trip was pretty uneventful - I was quite disgusted by several friends who were very unwilling to make an effort to catch up while I was in town for a very limited amount of time. I was quite displeased. If it is them visiting, I make an effort and meet them halfway. But apparently if I'm in town I am expected to go to them at their convenience. No doubt they are offended I only saw them briefly once, but I did invite them to a few different happening whilst I was there. The best they could do was catch up with me for a little bit on the first day and ask me when I was coming down next?? I was there for 5 days, come on!

Having said this, there were a few friends who made a huge effort. I greatly appreciate the effort!

Nine*9

Finally went into Sydney Harbour for the NYE fireworks. They were fantastic - awesome spot, awesome show - a hell of alot people, the walk back to Central Station felt like a protest march. It was interesting that the lineup for Maccas was the same length as those for the train stations.

Lovely.

It was the perfect way to welcome in 2010 - "twenty ten" mind you, none of this "two thousand and ten". I'm sorry but to those people who are future hater's and refuse to accept "twenty ten" I'm sorry but that's a shame.

The future's here..


And I like it.